Not one, but many globalisations

Bent Gravesen

The article discusses new forms of trade union solidarity in the light of
different forms of globalisation. The process of economic globalisation is not
uniform, but a process with many dimensions and different kinds of logic. The
process of economic globalisation is spreading from the sphere of financial
transactions to the sphere of production. It means, that capital increasingly
thinks globally, even when it acts locally. Capital gets new possibilities to
‘liberate’ it from local collective agreements, environment regulations, etc.
This makes a change in class relations in favour of capital and disfavour of
workers.

However, even though capital gains new possibilities to get away from local
and national non-economic bindings, this trend is not the only tendency. At the
same time, capital develops long-term dependence on ability to compete on
specific local qualifications and resources. This means, that new conflicts of
interests appears between short-term movement for lower wages and long-term
investments in local competence.

The heterogeneous process of globalisation makes the different strategic
answers to these possibilities increasingly important for the management of
enterprises, and the strategy chosen has important consequences for the
employees.

This gives an opportunity for the trade union representatives to get involved
in the process of developing management strategies and during this process take
care of the interests of the trade union members. This redefines the arena of
negotiation, collaboration and struggle. New threats and possibilities and new
kinds of class compromises arises.

At the same time a new kind of solidarity is developing. The flight of
capital challenges workers, local communities and sometimes even national
interests. The spontaneous answer to this development is a fight for the local
interests, where trade unions collaborate with local social movements. This
provides a social basis for a new kind of trade union activity as a fight for
social and environmental sustainability, where trade unions collaborate with
different social movements.

However, with multinational corporations is it not possible to defend the
local interests only by local protests. It is necessary to create solidarity
between local workers, local social movements and workers in other parts of the
multinational corporation. This solidarity does not follow the old formula of
international workers solidarity: ‘your enemy is our enemy. Your struggle is our
struggle’. The article suggests a new formula of this solidarity, transnational
trade union struggle and social movements: ‘Think locally - act globally’. The
article provodes examples of this new solidarity.